


Dial

by cyprith



Series: Modern Magic AU [5]
Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 02:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1840291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyprith/pseuds/cyprith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1AM, Maleficent's phone rang. Everything after hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dial

**Author's Note:**

> nadirmonkey prompted: where are your pants?
> 
> And I saw that prompt and thought, surely, surely I can only write a happy thing for this. 
> 
> Whoops.

Somewhere shortly after 1 AM, Maleficent woke to an unfamiliar song blaring from her nightstand. Diaval, she assumed, since only Diaval insisted on changing his ringtone every other day. Groggy and irritable, Maleficent groped for the phone.

“Hello?”

“I fucked up,” Diaval announced, his voice strange and tight. “I fucked up. I really fucked up.”

Maleficent’s feet hit the floor before she registered standing. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

For a long moment, he didn’t speak. Pressing the phone to her ear hard enough to hear the plastic creak, she picked up the sounds of sparse traffic, heard him pacing, barefooted against pavement. Throwing open her closet, she slipped into the first soft thing she grabbed.

At last, so quietly, Diaval whispered, “I ruined everything,” and claws scrabbled at her throat.

“You are still breathing,” she snapped. “Everything is clearly _not_ ruined. Where are you?”

She heard a sound like flesh hitting bricks, breath hitching, and Diaval dissolved into repetitions of, “ _I fucked up_.”

Crying, she realized. He was _crying_ —and Maleficent felt frozen and too hot, her ribs an iron cage around her heart. “ _Where are you_?”

The answer took a moment. “I’m… I’m home? I think I’m—no, I don’t live here. I don’t live here anymore. Oh god, Lef—Lefi, I fucked up. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Give me an address, Diaval,” she snarled, sharper than she meant to, but he wasn’t making sense and she couldn’t—she didn’t—

Alone in her apartment, Maleficent struggled to breathe.

At last he managed, “4 Wendell Way.”

And altitude restrictions be damned, Maleficent _flew_.

—

He’d taken something; that much she’d surmised over the phone. But while she’d known what to expect, she hadn’t been prepared. Not really.

She found Diaval in the alley beside 4 Wendell Way, barefooted and half-dressed, hunched and shaking against the wall. What remained of his hair hung around his face in tatters. Someone had shaved the left side of his head, carved runes and patterns into the stubble there.

Carefully, like creeping up on ravens, Maleficent inched into the alley. “Diaval?”

He looked up. Though his balance had long left him, somehow he managed to stand.

“Sorry,” he whispered, looking for all the world like a small and frightened child. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she said. And it wasn’t, it _wasn’t_ , her hands clenching uselessly at her sides, wings unfurled and bristling behind her. But it was the most she could do. “Can I take you home? Where are your pants? Your shoes?”

Diaval looked at her as though the question had not occurred to him. “I—I dunno. I have others?” He glanced at the side door of the building, scrubbed the back of a hand over his face. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Walking forward, Maleficent dared to reach for him. Her fingers found his arm, a shadow against the suggestion of feathers. At her touch, he startled, though he did not pull away. Slowly, his eyes found hers.

“I owe you everything,” he choked, throat so tight he could hardly speak. “And look— _look_ what I do with it. I made such a _fucking_ mess—”

“ _No_ ,” she said, solid as a spell, her grip firm and grounding on his arm. “Tomorrow, you can devote the entire day to feeling sorry for yourself. Tonight, I need to get you home.”

—

It took some time—nearly an hour and several crying jags—but she got him there, to the same wretched little building where they’d first met.

Nose curled at the peeling wallpaper and every creaking step, Maleficent half-carried him up the stairs to his flat. The view did not improve once inside. Looking around the studio apartment—at the ancient, battered carpet and walls forever stained by years of tenants’ smoking—she felt her chest constrict. Felt lost, somehow. Adrift.

“I pay you _far_ too much for you to still live here,” she told him, easing Diaval down onto the bed.

Hazy and unfocused, he shrugged. “Nowhere else to go,” he said. “Got a record, no references.”

Maleficent closed her eyes moment, struggling to keep composure.

“No references?” she asked at last. “Have you forgotten who you work for? Diaval, I own _entire buildings_.”

And on any other day, he would have had something clever in reply. Would have pretended at offence, given her a lecture on—on conspicuous consumption or defying social expectations— _some_ ridiculous soapbox. But tonight, Diaval just looked her, hollow and hurting, and said nothing.

Maleficent didn’t realize how much she’d been hoping for a quip until his silence struck her, heavy as fists.

Swallowing, she turned away and headed for the kitchenette. 

Building companies from nothing, rooting an empire in the bank accounts of those who _hated_ her and all her kind, weaving the media through her fingers like the strands of a spell—these things, she could do. These things, she _understood_. But this… She felt like she’d fallen in deep water, felt like drowning, the weight of her wings damning and dragging.

Maleficent opened the fridge. A tidy line of water bottles waited inside, amongst take-out leftovers and aging fruit. She took two, found herself wishing for Diaval’s smile, for a laugh, for him to _look like himself_ —just for a minute, a second, a moment in which he didn’t look so _wrecked._

“Here,” she said, crossing the room to sit on the bed beside him. “Drink.”

Diaval looked up in surprise. “You’re staying? Even—even though…” he trailed off, gestured to himself and could not seem to find the word.

“Of course,” she told him, her teeth sharp on the words, solid as stone.

And finally— _finally_ —Diaval smiled. A little thing, but Maleficent felt it like a summer wind, warm to the tips of her wings. Quietly, he said, “You’re a saint, Lefi.”

He’d called her that once before, over the phone, his voice so strange and broken. At the time, she’d paid it no mind. Now, though, it caught her attention.

“Lefi?” she asked.

Though she kept her face neutral, her voice so carefully even, Diaval’s jaw went tight. He glared at his water bottle, free hand restless and roaming on the sheets. “That asshole—that piece of shit, that _fuck_ —he called you Mal.”

Maleficent frowned, working his words over in her mind, trying to make any kind of sense from it. At last, it clicked. “Stefan?” she asked.

Diaval’s eyes darted to hers and away. Gingerly, he combed a hand through the remnants of his hair, looking anywhere else. “Yeah. You hated it.”

“I’m not fond of it, no,” she admitted and he shrugged.

“Figured, I dunno. Lef. Lefi.” Shy as ravens, he glanced her way. “You look like a Lefi when you smile.”

Despite the night, Maleficent couldn’t help but laugh a little at that.

“Ridiculous man,” she murmured fondly. “Drink your water and go to sleep.”

—

More or less, he did as she asked.

With Diaval burrowed beneath his sheets, Maleficent called into the office. She changed their outgoing messages to relay _family emergency_ , arranged for anything approaching crisis-level to reroute Balthazar’s way. Short of a full-scale PR meltdown, her VP could handle Moor Inc by himself for a week. At least.

But that done, Maleficent leaned back against the wall and found she had no idea at all where to go from here. Business came easy. _Business_ had protocols and precedents and a clear history of failures and success. But _this_ …

Next to her on the bed, Diaval stirred. Hazy and half asleep, he laced his fingers through hers. “Thank you,” he said, barely a whisper.

Jaw tight, chest aching, Maleficent squeezed his hand.

“Of course,” she told him again.

She did not say, “ _Where else would I be?”_

—

He passed out like that, smiling, curled up at her hip.

Plucking a dog-earned novel from his nightstand, Maleficent settled in.


End file.
